


peace within the storm

by sweetwatersong



Series: bright horizon beckons [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:05:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3533933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetwatersong/pseuds/sweetwatersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a safe place for her somewhere. Natasha will make one, if it does not exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	peace within the storm

**Author's Note:**

> As a heads-up, this is likely to make little sense if you haven't read the rest of the [series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/86989), which totals about 3.5k words.
> 
> Warning for past, deliberately inflicted wounds and associated blood.

Natasha accepts the receipt and taps the envelope the clerk puts in front of her. “Oh, can I leave the second keycard here? My friends are arriving later and I’ll probably be asleep by then. I’d hate to lock them out of their suite just because I’m napping.”

“Of course, Ms. Bartholomew.” The clerk finishes scanning the second card and slides it into another envelope. “Will that be all?”

“I think so. Thank you.” She takes the remaining keycard from the counter, slips it into her pocket and gives the clerk a nod before grabbing her rolling duffel and heading for the elevator. She knows her footsteps do not falter as she crosses the linoleum-tiled lobby but there is a moment, after she turns, when she watches his reaction in the reflecting windows to see if he is shocked.

When he looks back down at his computer with an air of indifference, she assumes the blood hasn’t finished soaking through her thrift store tracksuit. It will manage to do so in short order; she can already feel new trickles running down the curve of her spine. But there is nothing to do now other than to hole up in her third-story rented room and wait to see if her text gets an answer.

To see if the treachery runs deeper than she knows.

The room is clean and serviceable, the door leading to the neighboring suite locked and defensible. Natasha opts to leave the duffel by the couch and bolts the deadlock on the hallway door before opening the lock on the adjoining door. A few gasping minutes later see the couch rearranged to provide cover, the coffee table placed to stall anyone rushing into the room. It’s not made for an escape route, Natasha thinks critically as she rests her head on her knees, draws slow breaths in and lets them out; it’s designed to aid a last stand.

For better or worse, she’ll face her future in this neat white room, where the carpet is already stained with spots of her blood.

Once she can stand without the room spinning she unpacks the duffel, mechanically lays out the few things she bought at the thrift store or stole in her escape on the flowered bedspread. Several magazines for the Glock in the small of her back, a spare set of shirts and sweatpants, a hooded sweatshirt and ball cap, a small medical kit from the unremarkable office she had been held in. Not much, not enough, but it will have to do. 

Only then, everything tallied and surveyed, does Natasha allow the momentum of planning to roll away and uncover the emotions she’s worked so hard to suppress.

She sinks onto a corner of the queen bed to shiver relentlessly despite the afternoon sun, her white-knuckled fingers twisting the petite green flowers on the bedspread into wrinkled bouquets. The symptoms of delayed shock are familiar and expected; the roiling knot of anxiety and sickening fear, no less so. It eats at her, worming through her aching muscles with a vengeance that pulls dread from faint memories and suspicion from off-hand words. If those two had worked to betray SHIELD, had acted to divide her from her partner so that they might conquer, who else could be swayed by the same forces? 

Unsure of everything she has worked to build, Natasha holds onto the one certainty that supports her reshaped world, refusing to consider what it will mean if she is wrong.

The knock comes when she’s peeling the sodden jacket off of her back, working the dried fabric slowly away from her shirt; _shave and a haircut_. She still flicks the safety off her stolen Glock, holding it ready in the two-handed stance that hides how her arms still shake.

“Natasha?” Someone calls softly from the other side of the adjoining door, voice pitched low to carry through the thin wood. She wants to believe it, wants to give into relief, but her grip doesn’t waver as she watches the door. It swings open slowly to reveal three figures likewise ready for the unexpected; three familiar faces above clothes rumpled from the plane, behind weapons poised for action. They catch sight of her as soon as she steps out of the bathroom, gun resting now with the hand soap and gauze on the counter.

“Amsterdam,” she says simply, watching their reactions. _I’m clear._

Clint holds her gaze, shock still caught in the creases of his eyes.

“Portugal,” he replies as Maria and Sharon hold their places behind him, visibly relieved and yet cautious, aware of an exchange they’re not privy to. _All clear._

Natasha nods, standing in the doorway with blood on her hands and a weight on her heart, and shuts her eyes.

Her partner is here; she can relax at last.

Sharon is careful but thorough as she cuts the tracksuit away from Natasha’s back, loosening the dried patches with water sponged from the sink beside the tub. The SHIELD-level med kit open on the counter has an impressive array of tools and tablets, bandages next to antibiotics already picked out for use once the wounds are clear. For all of Carter’s caution, however, Natasha’s hands are white as she sits with her head bowed on the lip of the bathtub, enduring the pain.

There is a grim set to the other woman’s mouth that echoes her aunt’s famous determination, the courage to do what was right no matter the cost. It is reassuring, that fierce anger, the affirmation that Clint had been right to bring her into this. For all of her work undercover, her trade in secrecy and lies, there is a steel in her spine that will not be turned on her ideals. But this is not Sharon’s war to fight, not her battle to choose; that belongs to someone higher in the SHIELD hierarchy, someone whose swift action and unquestionable loyalty will see those responsible for Natasha’s captivity brought to justice. 

Sharon and Maria were not cut from the same cloth, but they had been fashioned into agents by the same formidable woman. Natasha wonders if Peggy Carter could have imagined how grateful a Russian traitor would be for her apprentices one day.

“Bridgfield and Tarnac,” Natasha says when Maria returns from securing the suite rooms and pauses in the doorway, looking for the answer to one of the two questions no one has yet asked. Surprise flashes through her superior’s expression before Hill nods, mouth set in a thin line, and returns to the other room to set up a direct line to Fury. Natasha understands that shock all too well; she couldn’t have imagined three days ago that the traitors in SHIELD’s midst would bear those names. But then again, she couldn’t have imagined Tarnac would send her under deep cover so he could snare her and keep SHIELD oblivious - all for the mutation borne under her skin.

There are always some things that speak louder than reason and loyalty.

“We got Bridgfield.” Clint looks down at his hands from where he is crouched in front of her, and there is anger in the tight corners of his eyes, tension in the curve of his back. “But Tarnac…”

Natasha doesn’t reply; she doesn’t have to. The scalpel-straight lines tracing her spine say it all for her.

“Got it.” Gently drawing away the last strip of polyester, Sharon bundles the bloodstained clothes into a trash bag and steps out of the tub. “I’ll be right back.” And there’s no mistaking the glance she sends Clint, the slight nod of his head; an exchange of subtle signs, a code all of their own. Matters thus arranged Carter heads out of the bathroom after Maria, her stiff shoulders disappearing through the door. 

Only then, as nominally alone as they can be, does Clint look back at Natasha and meet her gaze.

“Tasha.” And it would hard, she thinks as she studies him, so hard, if the obvious question was foremost, if the worry that hunched his shoulders and curved his pose was focused solely on the lines across her back. But she hasn’t given Clint such little credit for a very long time now, hasn’t doubted his heart, and the fear in his eyes is not for what she may be missing but what she may have lost.

There are scars on his back that will match hers, now. The hole that having his wings stolen left, well…

Natasha leans her head against his shoulder, closing her eyes, and lets herself find out the other answer.


End file.
